


Fox Fire

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Courtship, Friends to Lovers, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-05-08
Packaged: 2018-01-24 01:47:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1587143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ok, this one was an attempt to do a Mycroft as buttoned down, reserved, and professional as possible, with an added level of shy, and Lestrade as coming into it from a cold start with not a clue or thought beyond that he likes the man. Sherlock makes trouble, and Lestrade has to try to figure it all out without tipping the apple cart of panicking sly-fox Mycroft.</p><p>Clean, only gets to the first official move of "relationship."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fox Fire

The realization Mycroft cared about him came very slowly to Lestrade. Sherlock, of course, would have been scathing about it, announcing it indicated a certain lack of wit or observational capacity, but, really, that would have been quite unfair. Lestrade had worked with Mycroft only in a professional capacity, both before and after he started work with Sherlock, and their shared efforts had always been amenable and successful, but by no means what Lestrade would have thought of as particularly close or fraught. He liked the man—and admitted himself to be among the few who found his reserve faintly charming, rather than off-putting; quaint and shy, rather than cold. Over the years he’d developed a certain affection for the Holmes brothers, as though both had somehow stumbled into his care and keeping, awkward, ill-mannered orphan crows blown in by a winter storm.

There was a certain prestige to his association with both men, if also attendant drawbacks. If he lost some face having Sherlock, in his cover as civilian consultant, keep solving his cases while insulting him and his team, there was the counterpoint that Sherlock, brilliant and difficult, counted Lestrade among the few officers he deign to even consider working with…and, far more privately, the only MI5 agent he’d be partnered with under any circumstance. That kind of approval was, in some circles, nothing short of career gold.

Career platinum, though, was the fact that he was counted on Mycroft’s select team—and was one of the few who seemed to work with him, rather than merely for him. If the younger Holmes had a reputation as a screaming, head-tossing prima donna, the elder’s reputation was for passionless, slightly bitchy, frigid genius: the Vulcan’s Vulcan. That Lestrade worked well with him—that they appeared to get along—lifted him up from the common run and placed him firmly in the heavens of MI5 and MI6.

They did get along. In his own way, he got along with both of them; cherished each for unique qualities that charmed him. He envied Sherlock his passion on the hunt, when he belled like a bloodhound with the scent hot in his nose and drove toward a conclusion, stopping for nothing. Granted, “nothing” included petty little things like regulations and the preservation of the chain of evidence, but—he got his conclusions. Lestrade was more or less willing to repair the damages, just for the pleasure of watching the hound on the hunt.

Mycroft was a pleasure of a different sort. If Sherlock was the hound on the hunt, Mycroft was the fox in the gorse—shy, tricky, sly. Delicate and precise. When planning a mission he was a freaking menace, leaving Lestrade in awe and gratitude: if Mycroft sent Lestrade out with a mission, Lestrade knew he was in good hands. Mycroft was watching over him, had been watching for weeks before a mission was even mentioned. Had Mycroft been a real fox, the entire vulpine community would scoff at guns and traps, and no hen in the nation would sleep safe on her nest at night.

He could imagine Mycroft as a fox—neat black stockings, laughing face, rust fur with a white bib, tail tucked neatly around his paws, peering at the world from behind a thorn hedge. One of the pleasures of working with him was the pleasure of being gifted with the trust of anything wary and wild.

But it didn’t occur to him in a million years that he was the fox’s flame…

“You tell Mycroft,” Sherlock said, dripping with Thames water and totally furious. “He likes you.”

“Me telling him isn’t going to make him one bit happier Shaughnessy got away.” Sherlock gave him a _look._ “What?”

Sherlock just shook his head, and muttered, “Really, if you’d just pay attention…,” before stomping away, wringing out the skirts of the Belstaff and snarling about dry-cleaning.

Lestrade did tell Mycroft, and was unsurprised that the man was frustrated and irked, but hardly toxic. Mycroft generally wasn’t toxic. Tart at best, really. He was indeed tart, growling out a run of dry, witty, irritated comments about Shaughnessy’s luck and Mycroft’s wish that Sherlock and Lestrade could just once predict the man’s actions ahead of the curve rather than behind it. But Lestrade had been raked over the coals by real talent, in his rookie days—Mycroft, even sarcastic, was a walk in the park. Once he’d vented he even offered both his “legmen” hot tea before they left.

Ordinary, Lestrade thought, frowning.

“You could have told him,” he said to Sherlock the next day, over a Met case that involved five green corpses and a cricket bat.

Sherlock gave him another _look_ , then said only, “Ask Molly to do a bio-check on their skin, as well as the usual chemical tests. I think this may be algae.” Only when they left the site, did he say, out of the blue, “You won’t find paramecia if you insist on looking with a telescope. Stars, yes. Paramecia, no. Get your resolution right, Lestrade.” Then he flounced off as best he could with the Belstaff at the cleaners.

“What?” Lestrade shouted after him, only to get the bird flown back at him for his efforts, without Sherlock even bothering to turn and look back.

Lestrade took himself out to his favorite pub, and ordered a pint. He watched a review of the most recent Arsenal game on the telly over the bar. He asked himself, a bit sullenly, what he’d done to deserve Holmeses. He tried to figure out what Sherlock meant. Mycroft was, if anything, larger than his brother in all dimensions and by all plausible measurements except, perhaps, a measure of histrionics. What was this thing about microscopes and telescopes? The only thing Mycroft did small was emotion, and it wasn’t like he didn’t do emotion at all. He was just…loud on a different scale. By a different standard. You needed to know what you were…

He frowned at the pint, then shook his head. Mycroft liked him, he thought. More than Mycroft liked most people, but that wasn’t saying much. Mycroft was to other humans rather as an oyster was to grains of sand; as the poor man couldn’t plausibly turn the entire species into pearls, he tended to keep his shell shut tight and avoided exposure to the abrasive nature of his fellow human beings. But he wasn’t a monster or a hermit. Reserved and retiring, and very, very low-key, cards to his chest. Not, though, to the point of being squirrely. Sherlock? Sherlock was so nuts that Lestrade figured it was a miracle he wasn’t squirrel nirvana. Mycroft?

Nah. Not Mycroft. Sane, sober Mycroft? Naaaaaaaah. No.

The next time he was at Mycroft’s office, though, he found himself looking with his Holmes Hat on, trying to spot the minute tells, looking for clues. In his mind he could see himself as Elmer Fudd, dressed in hunting garb, complete with deerstalker and shotgun, hissing, “Shhhhh, be vewwy quiet—I’m hunting wabbits!”

Squirrels, rabbits, foxes, hounds. Holmeses were a veritable bestiary, he thought.

Mycroft worked on his side of the desk, steady and quiet, shooting files to Lestrade’s smart phone, turning his own screen to illustrate points of interest as they debated how to handle an oncoming contact with an Irish radical who’d flipped, disgusted by his associates extreme methods. He seemed, to Lestrade, normal. Calm. Unflustered. No blushes, no caught breath, no hesitations.

Sherlock was crazy. Not that this had ever been in doubt, but he was particularly crazy.

On the other hand, this was Mycroft Holmes, not Molly Hooper. Of course the man wasn’t going to be wandering around with his heart on his sleeve.

Lestrade found he wished there was a test he could run; a simple way to determine Mycroft’s state of mind and heart. It was unsettling not to know—to wonder.

Not offensive. Lestrade wasn’t prim that way, though he was also pretty inexperienced. It was just—he found it strange to have Sherlock suggesting something he couldn’t check. He spent the next weeks trying to determine a way to test what was apparently too subtle for his eye. What would a Holmes in love even look like? What would Mycroft in love look like?

It felt a bit like a bad joke. “What’s the difference between being adored by a statue and Mycroft Holmes? The statue’s more demonstrative.” Or: “Mycroft Holmes is in love with you. How can you tell? His blood thawed.”

With women you figured it out by asking them out, bringing them little, romantic presents, offering to do favors—fix the loo, clean the viruses out of their computers, change the oil in the car. How they reacted told you what they felt. It wasn’t just accept or refuse, but entire clusters of behavior that went with it. He didn’t think he could ask Mycroft out, and he was quite sure he had his own ways of getting his loo fixed or his oil changed. As for his computers, he was probably the one writing the viruses and the firewalls that would keep them out during his free time come an evening. Beyond that, he was pure Boy Scout: he seemed to epitomize the idea of being always prepared. Lestrade suspected that, no matter what the emergency, he’d be ready to handle it himself.

And if he did respond, what then? Lestrade didn’t even know what he felt about the idea of Mycroft being sweet on him. He was quite sure that any test had to leave him free and uncommitted, not tangled into a soap opera with a boss he quite liked and hoped to keep.

A test had to be safe…ideally safe and reliable.

On their next evening meeting, Lestrade left his phone on Mycroft’s desk, “forgotten.” He went home, and waited.

An hour later Anthea showed up at his door, with a cheery smile and his phone in her gloved hand. “Absent minded, much?”

“Mind on other things,” he said, as explanation. When she was gone, he swore, and decided this was a horrible waste of time and energy, and damn Sherlock for planting the seed of uncertainty in his head in the first place. He took the phone, pulled up Sherlock’s number, and texted, _Your brother is just a colleague. Why are you suggesting otherwise, you stupid arse? Bored and making troube?_

_You’re really hopeless. Still can’t see it? He’s practically shouting. SH_

_Bugger off, Sherlock. It’s not funny._

_Hopeless. Utterly hopeless. Meet his eyes and smile. See what happens. SH_

What happened was that Mycroft blinked and looked away, then began talking about bugging a terrorist’s car. Lestrade didn’t try again No doubt even if there was a response you needed Holmesian senses to detect it…that or exquisitely calibrated lab equipment operating in optimal lab conditions.

He was shot on a Met case. Mycroft did not land at his hospital bedside, frantic with worry.

He dated Anthea. Mycroft didn’t break down, fire Anthea, or sulk at either of them…and that was in spite of the fact that Anthea turned out to be a pretty good date, if not, ultimately, all that into him. They got on well even after it tapered off.

He tried to pick a fight with Mycroft. It didn’t even lead to a reprimand, just a weary, “Go home, Lestrade. You’re obviously having a bad day. We’ll talk when you’re rested.” It certainly didn’t lead to any suggestion that Mycroft hovered on his every word, yearning to be thought well of, longing to maintain sweet accord with a secret crush.

Sherlock went missing from hospital. Mycroft kept his head, gave Lestrade the information available, and stuck to his own work…

“He’s not in love with me, Sherlock.”

Sherlock just rolled his eyes and heaved a billowing, melodramatic sigh.

They ran a sting on a local criminal group with international ties. Eight months building it, three more implementing the stages of the sting. At the last minute the ringleaders panicked, and three agents were shot under Lestrade’s management.

No one blamed him. No one could have—it was too obviously one of those things. “No plan survives exposure to the enemy.” Shit happens.

Well…Lestrade blamed himself. If he only…something. There must have been something.

He was sitting in the war room an hour after the last of the final debriefing, when Holmes came in, neat in his Cromby overcoat, gloved, umbrella in hand. He stopped by Lestrade’s chair, and waited until the older man looked up. When he did, he said, simply and without drama, “I’m so sorry. Perhaps if I hadn’t insisted on that delay during Easter week. It seemed the right thing at the time, but…”

Lestrade shook his head. “No. It wasn’t anything you did. If I hadn’t made Warren refuse that date with the sister…”

“No. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Look at the two of us,” Lestrade said. “Both of us with our knickers in a twist. What a pair we make, eh?”

Mycroft looked away. “It’s only natural,” he said. “We take our obligations seriously. That’s all.” His hands, black as a fox’s neat paws, gripped the umbrella handle tightly, both folded over the polished mahogany.

Lestrade said, “Yeah, right. Not like you’re a good man, or anything,” and without thinking laid a hand over Mycroft’s.

Pale eyes returned to meet his. Mycroft’s face was still and empty; his pupils were large and startled as a frightened fox’s.

He ran to ground, then, slipping from Lestrade’s touch almost seamlessly. “I’m…nothing of the sort. Any good you see is merely a reflection of your own virtues.” Then he was gone.

Lestrade almost grabbed the phone to text Sherlock he was right. Then he stopped, suddenly sure he didn’t want Sherlock any more involved in this than he already was. The last thing Mycroft would want was his brother knowing more, and meddling. The last thing Lestrade himself needed was Sherlock doing the color announcement of everything from this moment on. Lestrade didn’t even know how he felt about it, now that he knew.

No, he thought, later that night drinking a scotch alone, listening to his favorite online radio. He closed his eyes, feeling neat foxglove fingers, black in soft leather, beneath his hand. Remembering the jolt of knowing…moving from the realm of the hypothetical to the certain.

He slipped his phone out of his pocket, and texted, _You might want to try courtship, you know. G_

It took forever for Mycroft to respond. When he did, it was one word. _Really? MH_

_Don’t know. That’s why I suggested courtship. G_

_It's impossible. MH_

_Bet you can work out fifteen possible ways to pull it off by our next meeting. G_

_You know me too well. MH_

_Yeah. So? Interested? G_

Another long, long pause, so long Greg thought the other man might have died, or at least fainted. But, at last, the answer arrived.

_Game on….MH_

 


End file.
